SKIN CREAM

Mercury in foreign products

Mercury, a neurotoxicant, has been banned from skin products in the United States since the 1970s. But those products remain unregulated outside the country, and use of them can be especially hazardous for mothers-to-be, new UCSF research suggests.

The study began with a survey of 77 pregnant women at San Francisco General Hospital. One stood out for having unusually high levels of mercury in both her blood and her umbilical cord blood.

After a home visit, the researchers deduced that the woman was using face cream bought in Mexico. Her two jars of cream had between 21,000 parts per million and 30,000 parts per million of mercury. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration says face cream products should contain less than 1 part per million of mercury.

The researchers weren't able to determine what kinds of health effects the chemical had on the mother and child. But mercury exposure has previously been found to harm the fetal central nervous system, resulting in decreased IQs and other cognitive and behavioral deficits in children.

The scientists are recommending that products with high levels of mercury be monitored and banned.

The case report appears online in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

BONE HEALING

Process speeds growth of tissue

Stanford University School of Medicine researchers say they have come up with a way to improve a surgical process that could speed up the growth of new, healthy bone, a development that could eventually help elderly patients whose bone fractures take longer to heal.

In their study, which involved mice and rabbits, researchers found that bone-forming cells dipped in a protein called Wnt3a can speed up the healing of fractures in older animals.

The researchers harvested whole bone marrow from lab mice and exposed it to either a combination of Wnt3a and water-friendly molecular bubbles, or a control solution. They then transplanted the combination into the animals. Soon, animals that had received the protein-treated marrow had significantly more bone at the sites of their injuries than the control animals.

If the treatment works in humans, researchers said it could significantly improve bone grafts, which involve transplanting whole marrow - which has stem cells that form bone, blood and cells of the immune system - into a fracture site.

The study was published last week in the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery.

- Stephanie M. Lee

GENOME

Students who test their DNA gain insight

Getting your genome tested for class is a relatively new and controversial trend in science education. But a study of how the experiment fared in a Stanford University class suggests that participating students better understood the class material.

The course, "Genetics and Personalized Medicine," was first offered in 2010 and developed by a then-graduate student in genetics.

That student then surveyed most of the people in the class before and after the course. He found that 70 percent of those who sent their saliva to a commercial genetics testing company and got the results back reported that they better understood human genetics as a result.

The results were based on the answers of just 31 students, but the study's authors said the results may encourage educators to include genome testing in future courses.

The study was published Tuesday in Plos One.

- Stephanie M. Lee

DIABETES

'Reverse vaccine' shows promise

A "reverse vaccine" that combats Type 1 diabetes by shutting down the immune cells believed to be responsible for the disease delivered "promising results," according to researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine.

In a 12-week clinical trial, researchers found that those who received the vaccine seemed to suffer less destruction of beta cells. Beta cells, located in the pancreas, are responsible for releasing insulin. In Type 1 diabetes, the immune system attacks those cells.

The vaccine targets a group of immune cells that researchers think may be responsible for beta cell destruction. Researchers said that shutting down a specific immune response, rather that turning on immune responses as most vaccines do, is a new concept.

The vaccine still requires larger, longer trials to confirm the results. No DNA vaccine has ever been approved for human use. Any potential application of the vaccine is still several years off.

ALZHEIMER'S

Type 2 diabetes protein linked to disease

A protein that builds up in the pancreas of people with Type 2 diabetes and has been found sticking to blood vessels and muscle in the heart also seems to form sticky plaques in the brain, and it may be a cause of Alzheimer's disease, according to UC Davis scientists.

The protein amylin, a hormone that is produced along with insulin to help regulate how the body processes sugar, can cause problems when it's over-secreted and begins to form thick plaques.

Scientists have long been aware of another plaque-forming protein - amyloid beta - that builds up in the brains of people with Alzheimer's. Amyloid beta is considered one of the main markers of the disease, and much of the research to treat and prevent Alzheimer's involves attacking the protein.

The amylin discovery may offer another treatment approach, the UC Davis team said.

Their research was published online July 12 in the Annals of Neurology.

CANCER

Drug helps turn off tumors

UCSF researchers have found a way to target a protein that appears to act as a master switch in cancer cells to spur uncontrolled tumor growth, a discovery they hope will pave the way for new cancer treatments.

The work centers on a protein known as myc, which is considered a major player in many cancers, including lung, colon, breast, brain, prostate and blood. Abnormal myc is associated with excessive protein production that the tumors use to grow in perpetuity. No drug has been able to successfully target it.

By focusing on another protein myc relies on, called mTor, UCSF researchers learned that mTor disables a protein that acts as a tumor suppressor. So they targeted mTor with an experimental therapy, which in turn caused a shutdown of excess protein in myc-driven cancer cells and led to their death.

The experimental drug used by the researchers is already being evaluated in clinical trials to treat a variety of cancers, but its affect on myc-driven tumors had not previously been known.

The study was published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.